fury road

There may be spoilers below. There may not be. I haven’t fully planned this post. However, there’s not much to spoil. ***Spoiler Alert*** Mad Max movie has car-based action sequences. See what I mean?

Here’s how I would describe this movie: Start with the long take that opens Touch of Evil and combine it with the chase scene in Bullitt. Next, sprinkle in countless explosions, guns, pole vaults, chained-together nipple rings, a baddie named Immortan Joe, and post-apocalyptic cars. There you have it – Mad Max: Fury Road. The movie leaves you exhausted and in need of a tetanus shot – which is the desired outcome of seeing an over-the-top action film.

There was some minor “controversy” among the Men’s Rights Movement because this film has a woman as a main character. I know. I nearly man-fainted when I heard the news, too. In all fairness to the guy who posted the initial anti-Furiosa rant, he hadn’t actually seen the movie when he was ranting, so his points were just made up out of misogynistic hatred. He can’t really be faulted for being inaccurate about the film.

Here’s the thing, this movie isn’t radically feminist. It isn’t regressive, per se, but there’s no feminist manifesto here. This film is upsetting MRAs because it actually has a reason to have a woman in the cast.

Hell, the roles played by women are mostly traditional. They are “breeders,” custodians of “the green place”, and the givers of compassion. In other words, they’re all mothers of one sort or another. However, when push comes to shove, one woman can beat a motherfucker (with the help of a bunch of other women and a mechanical arm). Consider this line from the MRA rant: “This is the Trojan Horse feminists and Hollywood leftists will use to (vainly) insist on the trope women are equal to men in all things, including physique, strength, and logic.” For all that is over-the-top in this film, this line is inaccurate. The women in the film do not equal the men in physique and strength. Not even close. They are equal in logic and driving skills. So, when we boil down the actual movie, the feminist “trope” is that women can be decent drivers. This puts the film on par with the radical feminism of NASCAR.

Anyway, this film is non-stop action. I mean it. It is relentless. Go see it, in 3D, on the biggest screen you can find. I’m not a big action film guy. I’m not a Mad Max fan boy (though I will admit to watching Beyond Thunderdome a bunch when I was young). I am just a guy who can enjoy a good film, even when it is an action film with icky girls in it.

[Edit] Here are two more reviews of the film that more explicitly call the film feminist. They do a better job of explaining what I mean by “It isn’t regressive, per se, but there’s no feminist manifesto here.”

2. From The Filmology I want to single out this quote from the Filmology’s review:

‘This film isn’t “feminist propaganda” as some people might accuse it to be. We as a film-viewing society have just forgotten that women can be leading action ladies and kick ass and be awesome, without any superfluous romantic subplots or gratuitous nudity moments. These women are portrayed as humans, saviours, sisters, mothers, friends and heroes, and they never have their femininity under threat because that isn’t an issue. The fact that they are women is just an uncompromisable fact that doesn’t deter their pursue of justice and freedom, and for that I salute George Miller because in the midst of all the pumped up, overly masculinised, masturbatory action films of the past many years, it is fantastic to see that this kind of story can still be get majorly released and be a success.’